Chrome overtakes Firefox in browser wars, but neither the top choice

Google Chrome has been fighting for a share of the browser market since it launched back in 2008. For the first time, it seems to be making some real progress.

A recent survey by StatCounter of the top five browsers over the last two years finds that Chrome is fractionally edging out Mozilla's Firefox in worldwide browser usage. A total of 25.69 per cent were running Chrome as of November 2011, versus the 25.23 per cent using Firefox.

That trend changes from country to country, though. In Canada, Firefox is still the number two browser of choice with 24.18 per cent of users, while only 19.51 per cent are using Chrome in this country.

The undisputed leader, though, remains Internet Explorer across the board. It boasts almost double the percentage of users that Firefox and Chrome do, with 40.63 per cent of people operating IE. Those users, however, have dropped off steadily over the last two years while Chrome has done nothing but grow in popularity.

Internet Explorer's continued dominance is unsurprising; after all, it's still the default browser in the Windows operating system. If you're a big fan of the Chrome experience, though, Google offers a way to throw Windows out the… window… altogether. Earlier this year, Google began shipping Chromebooks, which run the Google Chrome OS, although tech bloggers remain unimpressed with the cloud-only laptops.

Of course, desktop and laptop computers aren't the only browser battleground anymore. While Safari might only have 5.92 per cent of the market share on full browsers, Apple's browser handily dominates the mobile and tablet market for the same reason Internet Explorer remains so widely used.

In November, 55 per cent of tablets and other mobile devices were running Safari for mobile, according to Net Marketshare. Opera Mini holds 20.1 per cent of the global market, Google's Android Browser commands 16.4 per cent and Symbian Browser brings up the rear with 3 per cent.